"By Jove!" cried Lord Otford, "you make me want to see these paragons!" "Well, Madame ’s only gone shopping. She ’ll be back directly. Wait, and I ’ll present you." "No," said his friend, signalling to the sedan-bearers. "Not to-day. I’m on my way to old Wendover, at Brentford." "Ah! That marriage! Well, I hope I shall see Jack soon." "You’ll help me, won’t you?" "I will. I will. God bless you." Sir Peter escorted his friend to the sedan; saw him safely into it and walked at its side until it turned the corner. As he came back he found himself face to face with Marjolaine, who had finished her lesson and was coming out of Number Three with a book in her hand. "There, now, Missie," he cried, "if you’d come a moment earlier, I’d have presented you to a very great man!" "Oh?" At his door the Admiral put his hand up to his mouth and whispered confidentially—a confidential whisper which could have been heard the other side of the river—"I say!—We ’ll have a go at that horn-pipe by-and-by—what?" And chuckling he went into his house. Marjolaine came slowly to the elm, seated herself, and proceeded to read the "Adventures of Telemachus." *CHAPTER V* *CONCERNING WHAT YOU HAVE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR* [Illustration: Chapter V headpiece] The sun shone; the thrush sang; the leaves of the elm rustled; the great river flowed silently; the breeze came and kissed Marjolaine and whispered "Wake up! Wake up! Something is going to happen!" But she could not hear. She only thought Telemachus was even duller than usual, and as she read of Mentor she thought of the Reverend Doctor Sternroyd. Presently—whether it was the breeze that blew her thoughts away, or the singing of the thrush, I cannot say—she lost the thread of the story; stopped thinking at all; and just sat with her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand, looking with her great brown eyes into—what? The Eyesore saw her. I cannot dip into the Eyesore’s mind. I cannot tell you what influenced him. I only know he grew restless. He looked at her over his shoulder once or twice as she sat there, "In maiden meditation, fancy free," and suddenly he got up, laid his rod carefully across the chains, and stole out on tip-toe. Was it a glimmering sense that he was no company for this pretty maid lost in thought? Was it a dim realisation that his ungainly figure had no business to intrude on her meditations? Whatever the cause, he stole out on tip-toe and was lost to sight. Perhaps he was only thirsty.